Latest / Mini Scroll / Touching Grass with multi-media freelancer Kriti Gupta

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Touching Grass with multi-media freelancer Kriti Gupta · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Welcome to Touchgrass, a miniseries where I chat with
• 0:03
  creatives about staying sane while being chronically online.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Lauren Meisner, and Touchgrass is a miniseries
• 0:11
  brought to you by Britta, where we explore the implications of
• 0:14
  being chronically online with the creatives who can't escape
• 0:17
  it. One thing that keeps coming up
• 0:19
  in these conversations is how important small grounding
• 0:22
  routines are offline. And for me, one of those
• 0:26
  routines is drinking enough water.
• 0:28
  Whether I'm refilling my water bottle for a long walk or taking
• 0:31
  a break from scrolling my For You page, Britta makes it easy
• 0:34
  for me to stay hydrated and grounded with pure, fresh
• 0:37
  tasting filtered water straight from any tap.
• 0:40
  Thank you to Britta for supporting independent media and
• 0:43
  helping us take better care of ourselves one refill at a time.
• 0:46
  Today I'm chatting with journalist, mental health
• 0:49
  advocate and self-described terminally online expert, Kriti
• 0:53
  Gupta. As fellow media girlies, Kriti
• 0:55
  and I have known each other for years.
• 0:57
  Throughout our conversation, she takes me through her career
• 1:00
  journey, how she handles tall poppy syndrome, as a woman of
• 1:03
  color in a visible industry, and of course, her tips for touching
• 1:08
  grass. Oh my God, we're literally
• 1:10
  touching grass and I'm so happy that we got to do that.
• 1:13
  I know we brought for anyone that listens and doesn't watch.
• 1:15
  We brought our podcast chairs outside so we are fully in the
• 1:20
  park near our office and honestly the vibes are pretty
• 1:22
  good. OK, well I'm so excited to chat
• 1:24
  with you today about being chronically online, what you do
• 1:27
  for work, and how you stay mentally healthy.
• 1:30
  See amongst it all. So first, you are chronically
• 1:34
  online. Oh, by default, since the day I
• 1:36
  was born. I'm pretty sure I came out with
• 1:38
  a BlackBerry before a BlackBerry was invented.
• 1:40
  So how would you describe being chronically online?
• 1:43
  Like what does it mean to you? I think what it means to me is,
• 1:46
  and I referenced this in another interview recently, but have you
• 1:50
  seen the town cry a meme in the TikTok comments section?
• 1:53
  Yes, that is us like giving. Everyone the tea?
• 1:58
  Yeah, Giving. Everyone the tea and when people
• 2:00
  say Oh well that's just such a new phenomenon.
• 2:02
  No, they had town criers back in the 1600s.
• 2:05
  We are just the 21st century version of a town crier.
• 2:09
  That's an insane analogy. I love it but I think.
• 2:12
  It's true. I think it's a very positive way
• 2:14
  to look at something that a lot of parts of society still find a
• 2:19
  way to kind of demonize us for it.
• 2:21
  And it's often women, let's be for sure.
• 2:23
  So for real here, I like to look at the positives, like, we
• 2:26
  became friends. Yeah, on the Internet.
• 2:28
  We became friends on the Internet, everyone who was
• 2:30
  watching us. Became friends with us.
• 2:33
  Or socially on the Internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:36
  Some of the best relationships and the best opportunities that
• 2:38
  I've had in my life have come from being terminally online.
• 2:43
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. OK, So your job you are like, as
• 2:47
  Australians would say, a slashy. A slashy which is such a funny.
• 2:51
  Word. I know.
• 2:52
  It's the first time I ever heard.
• 2:53
  It was a few years ago, like from an Aussie.
• 2:54
  And I was like, what does that mean?
• 2:56
  But for anyone that's not Australian, that just means
• 2:57
  somebody who wears many hats, freelances, consults, that kind
• 3:02
  of stuff, slash, slash, slash. I did see somewhere else that in
• 3:05
  2025 you said you felt like that was the year where everything
• 3:07
  for your career came together. So can you speak to us a little
• 3:09
  bit about your? Career, yeah, absolutely
• 3:11
  everyone likes to be like, oh, overnight success story.
• 3:14
  And I think if you look at the last like 2 years, it'd be like,
• 3:17
  oh pretty came out of nowhere or something like that in the
• 3:20
  industry. But I started working in media
• 3:23
  as a 16 year old who would run Facebook pages for charities.
• 3:27
  So that was to get them to like Book Fest and the Rockhampton
• 3:33
  Showground stalls that they would have when I was 14.
• 3:37
  And they would raise money to then put it back into the
• 3:40
  community. My father used to work with the
• 3:42
  Rotary Clubs and the like. And he saw me spending all of my
• 3:45
  time on the Internet till three, 4:00 in the morning.
• 3:48
  So he said, hey, if you manage our Facebook page, I will give
• 3:52
  you some money. Oh, my God.
• 3:53
  And that was my first media job, before media Facebook jobs were
• 3:56
  even a thing. Yeah.
• 3:57
  Wow. Then I would say my first big
• 4:00
  girl job with big pants and a lanyard with a little media tag.
• 4:05
  What was the Commonwealth Games in 2018?
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  Working in the Athletes Village for the newspaper with Fairfax
• 4:10
  that they did at the time there. Then I started working in AD
• 4:14
  agencies and I worked at magazines and beauty startups
• 4:19
  and all the likes. Then I went off on my own three
• 4:21
  years ago and haven't looked back.
• 4:24
  How do you find freelancing? Is it challenging on your mental
• 4:27
  health? The instability or do you prefer
• 4:30
  it? I feel now I finally, as you
• 4:33
  mentioned what I wrote about at the end of last year, I'm in
• 4:36
  this position where I feel like I understand the trials and
• 4:39
  tribulations of being a freelancer a lot better than I
• 4:41
  did a few years ago. I was speaking to another
• 4:44
  industry peer about this and it is January rolls around every
• 4:48
  year and every January you're like, I'm never going to get
• 4:51
  work. Again, yes.
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  There's, there's no money. Everything's going to the
• 4:54
  toilet. I'm I'm going to have to go back
• 4:56
  to a corporate job and then you. You figure it out.
• 5:02
  You. Figure it out.
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  You drink some cement and you're like, you know what?
• 5:05
  This happened last year, It happened the year before.
• 5:07
  And it always works itself out. You know what you have to do.
• 5:10
  And but the psychology is, you know, this is the cycle of
• 5:15
  working for yourself. Yeah, I post on LinkedIn so
• 5:18
  much. I post on LinkedIn so much.
• 5:22
  I love it. And then I also post on
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  Instagram a lot and I post on TikTok a lot.
• 5:26
  And I've never really had to do the whole I've, I've done
• 5:30
  pitching a few times when I first started.
• 5:32
  But in terms of putting ads for turning myself into a business,
• 5:36
  which I know, you know, if you run like a copywriting business
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  or even if you run like a social media agency as a one man show,
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  you do often have to do that. And that is a big part of the
• 5:45
  job in that sense. You're just shamelessly out
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  there. I'm just shamelessly out there
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  and I'm talking about the the stuff that other people are also
• 5:52
  interested in because I know that the people that I want to
• 5:54
  work with are probably going to be people that are in the same
• 5:58
  kind of headspace as I am. I am, so that's always helpful.
• 6:01
  Do you feel held back at all by tall poppy syndrome or does that
• 6:06
  affect you at all? So for anyone that doesn't know
• 6:08
  what that is, it is I suppose a quote UN quote syndrome, I think
• 6:12
  a specific to Australia, where in a field of poppies, the
• 6:18
  tallest one gets cut down so that they all stay the same
• 6:21
  because promoting yourself so much, how do you feel tall poppy
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  syndrome has impacted that? With tall poppy syndrome,
• 6:28
  there's a a whole nother level to it as a woman of color as
• 6:31
  well. In this country, you can only
• 6:32
  say or do so much easily as long as it keeps the status quo.
• 6:37
  It was the 20th anniversary of High School Musical.
• 6:39
  And the one song that still sticks in my head is Stick to
• 6:42
  the Status Quo because I think that that is such an accurate
• 6:45
  representation of how especially this industry, because a lot of
• 6:50
  us are so online and so. And you do have to put yourself
• 6:54
  out there so much more than I guess you would say, my brother
• 6:58
  who works in finance. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:00
  It it it definitely gets to this place of people will support you
• 7:04
  as long as you stay just below them.
• 7:06
  Yes. A. 100% I had an experience.
• 7:09
  Obviously I cannot relate to the woman of color experience in
• 7:12
  this industry, but I was posting so much more on LinkedIn in
• 7:15
  2024, beginning of 2025. You know, when I took the
• 7:18
  business over myself. One of my close friends in the
• 7:21
  industry told me months after it happened that a man in the
• 7:26
  industry screenshot of one of my LinkedIn posts and put it on
• 7:29
  Twitter and was like making fun of me.
• 7:31
  And she privately messaged him and said what the fuck is wrong
• 7:33
  with you? Like she's trying to run an
• 7:35
  indie media branch. She needs to promote her
• 7:37
  business. And he actually, like, listened
• 7:39
  and took it down. But I really hadn't experienced,
• 7:43
  I suppose, tall poppy syndrome first hand that I knew of.
• 7:46
  Yeah. Like having that direct
• 7:48
  judgement, somebody screenshotting my post and
• 7:50
  putting on Twitter to make fun of me is wild.
• 7:52
  It is wild and but the worst part is you mentioned the that
• 7:55
  you know of. Yes, right.
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  The way that I always see it is the people who will have your
• 8:00
  back and the people that you should rely on are the ones who
• 8:02
  are going to recommend you when you're not even in the room or
• 8:06
  anywhere near the room. The ones who are like, oh, she's
• 8:08
  not here, but she should be here.
• 8:09
  Yeah. And those are the people that
• 8:11
  you can count on at the end of the day.
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  Because the others, they'll say one thing to your face and one
• 8:15
  thing behind your back and that that high school mentality,
• 8:19
  unfortunately, no matter where you are, I don't think that goes
• 8:21
  away. I can honestly admit to the fact
• 8:24
  that I've definitely messed up in the past and done that.
• 8:26
  And my biggest goal for this year is to be better in that
• 8:29
  space as well. Yeah, of course.
• 8:31
  Like it's so easy to fall into that trap, especially because
• 8:34
  there's always an element of competition amongst your peers
• 8:38
  for different jobs, for budgets, all that kind of stuff.
• 8:40
  Exactly. Yeah, it's a tough industry,
• 8:41
  that's for sure. OK, So you have mentioned in the
• 8:44
  past to me privately and so now I'm going to air it out
• 8:47
  publicly. Don't worry.
• 8:48
  She had these questions in advance.
• 8:49
  Okay, That's not me being like, so savage.
• 8:52
  She's a good journalist of. That yeah, I'm ethical.
• 8:57
  That you never want to go back to a nine to five.
• 9:01
  Can you tell me about that? You.
• 9:02
  Can't work in media and be expected to work 9:00 to 5:00
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  because even when I was in a nine to five role, I was not
• 9:08
  working 9:00 to 5:00 as a social media and digital editor.
• 9:12
  So paying someone a nine to five salary and then having the
• 9:16
  expectations of them being 24/7. And this is not me just saying
• 9:21
  this around social media or media roles.
• 9:23
  This is a LinkedIn post that's come up multiple times over the
• 9:26
  last few years. I don't think it's realistic to
• 9:29
  expect someone who works in this field and expect them to be 9 to
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  5, but then expect them to be chronically online enough to
• 9:34
  jump onto things for your brand but then also pay them that
• 9:37
  salary. Yeah, OK.
• 9:39
  That's fair enough. And I think the hard thing with
• 9:42
  media, which I think it happens in a lot of careers, is that it
• 9:45
  becomes so much part of your identity.
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  You can't switch it off. You can't, You can't, and the
• 9:51
  only times I ever switch off is when I'm forced myself to go to
• 9:55
  a place with no Internet connection.
• 9:56
  Oh. My God, really?
• 9:57
  Yeah. I was going to ask you.
• 9:58
  OK, so tell me about how you stay mentally healthy while
• 10:00
  being chronically online, especially as a freelancer.
• 10:02
  I imagine you're constantly, I mean, we're the same, but like,
• 10:05
  you know, I imagine you are constantly jumping on trends,
• 10:08
  having to create that content yourself, having to pitch
• 10:10
  yourself. OK, I found this trend.
• 10:12
  Like, you know, can I write about it?
• 10:13
  Can I cover it for you? Yeah.
• 10:15
  How do you stay well? As you know, I travel a lot.
• 10:18
  Yeah. And 90% of my travel is work
• 10:21
  related, but that 10% that isn't.
• 10:24
  I make sure that I'm in a town that has 0 Internet signal.
• 10:27
  Oh my God. The only way that my friends and
• 10:29
  I have the Christmas break, we're able to stay in touch
• 10:31
  while we were travelling together as a group is old
• 10:33
  school. We were like 5:00 PM.
• 10:35
  We're meeting at this spot in front of the Nets on the beach.
• 10:38
  If we lose each other throughout the day, so be it.
• 10:40
  You have to like go to a restaurant and ask them for
• 10:43
  Wi-Fi. The best thing was I didn't even
• 10:45
  know what I was missing until I got back online like a week
• 10:48
  later. And to be fair, I missed a lot,
• 10:50
  but it wasn't the end of the world.
• 10:52
  Does yeah, does that? I was gonna say, Does that give
• 10:53
  you anxiety? It used to, yeah.
• 10:56
  There was this one flight that I went on last year.
• 10:59
  It was from New Zealand back to Australia.
• 11:01
  When I was getting on the plane everything was fine.
• 11:04
  By the time I got off the plane 3 hours later, TikTok had gone
• 11:08
  down. Oh my God it's giving drama.
• 11:11
  Get in tik. T.O.K had gone down and I was
• 11:14
  like, my phone was just pinging as I turned it on, and I was so
• 11:19
  anxious to catch a flight for weeks afterwards.
• 11:23
  Yeah. And I went on 50 something
• 11:24
  flights last year. So I was just sitting with this
• 11:27
  like, bundle of anxiety. And then I only started booking
• 11:29
  flights with Wi-Fi because I was so scared.
• 11:32
  Oh my God. And then I was like, that's not
• 11:33
  OK. Yeah.
• 11:34
  And you're like, it's, it's not like the ER, like we're not
• 11:38
  saving lives. We're.
• 11:39
  Not saving lives. So there was this period of time
• 11:41
  last year where I was at the complete opposite end of the
• 11:43
  spectrum to where I am now, where I was anxious about being
• 11:47
  on a plane. I was anxious driving through
• 11:51
  certain parts of Sydney where the signal drops out for 15
• 11:53
  minutes. Yeah.
• 11:54
  And that took a lot of hard work with myself to work that out.
• 11:58
  Yeah, I was gonna say, how did you get to that point?
• 12:01
  A few things. There was a bit of a
• 12:02
  relationship breakdown, there was a work relationship
• 12:06
  breakdown, a friendship break. There was a few different things
• 12:08
  that kind of happened and I had to really take a hard look at
• 12:13
  what was important. Yeah.
• 12:15
  Honestly, that's fair enough. And the thing was, OK, I can
• 12:19
  miss 3 hours of work and I'm not going to lose my entire life's
• 12:22
  work. Yeah, when you have breakdowns
• 12:23
  like that, you realize, oh, how easily this can be taken from
• 12:26
  you, how easily this can be. Taken.
• 12:28
  Who fucking cares? Exactly.
• 12:29
  And it was when things were taken that were really important
• 12:32
  to me that I realized, OK, there needs to be a much, much, much
• 12:37
  healthier level of handling this because otherwise, what?
• 12:42
  I'm turning 30 soon. I love my job.
• 12:45
  I love this career. I think in order to be
• 12:47
  successful in this field, you really do have to love it.
• 12:50
  Yeah. And if I no longer love it, then
• 12:53
  I'm not gonna be able to do it. Yeah.
• 12:54
  And it was getting to that point that if I didn't change those
• 12:57
  things, I wasn't gonna love it anymore.
• 12:58
  Yeah, fair enough. The reason why I said you being
• 13:01
  on the plane and then opening your phone to no TikTok was late
• 13:04
  Dramageddon because you guys remember the first Dramageddon,
• 13:07
  That's how it happened. They were all in a brand trip on
• 13:09
  the way back from the brand trip and they opened their phones, or
• 13:11
  maybe it was right before they got on the flight and the
• 13:13
  cancellation started. So I'm interested actually on
• 13:17
  that note, we're pivoting a bit, but it's still related.
• 13:21
  As somebody who's chronically online, that obviously keeps up
• 13:23
  with pop culture, Internet culture, and you cover that a
• 13:26
  lot for your job as well. How do you feel about cancel
• 13:28
  culture? I don't think cancel culture
• 13:31
  exists like it did in 2016, Firstly, because I work a lot in
• 13:34
  the advocacy space and the politics space as well.
• 13:36
  And there's a different level of, I guess, cancellation that
• 13:40
  people look at towards things or how you're expected to be the
• 13:44
  perfect advocate. And the, the biggest thing that
• 13:49
  I truly believe in when it comes to advocacy is like, there is no
• 13:52
  such thing as a perfect advocate.
• 13:53
  And if your entire goal is to always be liked by people in the
• 13:58
  policy and advocacy space, well, then you are doing it for
• 14:02
  narcissistic reasons. And then that goes into the
• 14:04
  whole tent pole of 99% of people who work in this industry.
• 14:10
  You are a little bit narcissistic.
• 14:11
  You have to be if you're going to put your face on the Internet
• 14:14
  on camera every single day. Yeah, totally.
• 14:16
  You have to be. And you also have to acknowledge
• 14:18
  and accept that, yeah, your flaws are your flaws.
• 14:22
  And if you kind of like become comfortable with them and learn
• 14:26
  how to work with them better, that is how you actually become
• 14:29
  a better human being. I really like what you said
• 14:32
  about, you know, you're doing it for narcissistic reasons because
• 14:35
  it's so hard when you start putting yourself out there when
• 14:38
  you realize that not everyone's going to like you.
• 14:41
  And it's such a challenge to get over that hurdle.
• 14:43
  And I really struggled with it when our YouTube channel started
• 14:46
  to get a lot more views than it previously did.
• 14:49
  And like, I had a YouTube channel before Centennial, but
• 14:51
  it was so different because it was my lifestyle.
• 14:53
  Like I was vlogging about my experience moving to Australia
• 14:56
  and I was 24 and whatever. And it just, you know, now I'm
• 14:59
  talking about controversial topics, I'm talking about pop
• 15:01
  culture, I'm talking about creators that a lot of people
• 15:03
  don't like. And it's such a different
• 15:06
  experience when people come for you, for your opinion.
• 15:08
  But I I'm going to keep that in my mind that I'm being
• 15:11
  narcissistic when I see comments that hurt my feelings.
• 15:14
  But but the other thing is, and the thing that you said about
• 15:17
  like your lifestyle vlogs versus the stuff now, now you are
• 15:20
  talking about things or working in topics where people think
• 15:24
  there is a right and a wrong side from the like without
• 15:27
  actually delving into it. They'll see a few words and
• 15:29
  they'll be like there's immediately this side and
• 15:31
  there's that side and my side is the right side.
• 15:35
  No matter what anyone says, my side is the right side.
• 15:37
  And that does. I mean that people aren't going
• 15:39
  to like you, Lord. No, that's for sure.
• 15:42
  That's for sure. Girl.
• 15:43
  Like lots of people don't like me now.
• 15:45
  I didn't. Come to realize that no 100%
• 15:49
  somebody on Reddit the other day called me the most annoying
• 15:51
  podcast hosting the entire world.
• 15:53
  We did talk about this. OK, I'm sorry.
• 15:56
  In the world of Joe Rogan. 'S in the.
• 15:58
  World of Logan Paul. Man the world.
• 16:01
  Is. Crazy.
• 16:02
  Out of all of the white men, you're actually the most
• 16:05
  annoying. I know I love it.
• 16:08
  OK, so as you mentioned, mental health and advocacy has been a
• 16:11
  through line in your career. You recently launched in my head
• 16:14
  Co yes. Tell us about that.
• 16:16
  So basically you mentioned yeah, yourself, I've been working in
• 16:21
  kind of like the politics and advocacy space, obviously used
• 16:24
  to run Facebook pages for charity groups as a teenager.
• 16:26
  And then that's kind of carried through with a lot of projects
• 16:29
  that I've done over the last few years.
• 16:31
  One of the things that I noticed working on both the media and I
• 16:34
  guess the mental health and the advocacy side of things is a few
• 16:38
  years ago when you would read an article or, and even now still
• 16:42
  you read an article about depression or suicide or any one
• 16:46
  of those really difficult subject matters, you get 4 or
• 16:50
  five help lines at the end of the article, right?
• 16:52
  And that's pretty much, it's not like enacted policy, but it's
• 16:55
  like the media industry, like guidelines and standards.
• 16:59
  Now, when you read an article, say about the cost of living,
• 17:02
  Lauren, or about the war in Iran or about the Bush fires in
• 17:09
  Victoria in the last week, you will read it.
• 17:11
  And you will also have a mental health impact from reading that
• 17:15
  piece. And there's also this feeling
• 17:17
  that you get of like, OK, well, I can't do anything.
• 17:19
  Helplessness. There's a lot of helplessness.
• 17:22
  So my vision and what I'm trying to work through with media and
• 17:25
  policy and advocacy stuff and been engaging with a whole bunch
• 17:29
  of people and Michael Lord, policy change in this country is
• 17:32
  hard, guys, let me tell. You that so you're like,
• 17:34
  actually, what are you doing? Tell me.
• 17:36
  Tell. Me.
• 17:37
  So basically at the moment, it's a lot of like think tanks and
• 17:40
  working with people to get it in front of the right room.
• 17:42
  OK. Because it's very early days and
• 17:43
  a lot of funding and grant applications.
• 17:46
  Yeah. Fun stuff.
• 17:47
  Yeah. Anyone who's doing those
• 17:49
  rejection therapy challenges, start a business.
• 17:51
  That's the best way to experience rejection therapy.
• 17:56
  But basically whenever we, the goal is that whenever you see an
• 18:00
  article or read an article on any publisher, website,
• 18:04
  magazine, that if it is about any of these issues, that there
• 18:08
  is then helpline. Well, resources and helplines
• 18:11
  for you to help the issue at hand, but also yourself.
• 18:14
  So one of our first pieces was around the South Australia algal
• 18:17
  blur. Oh yeah.
• 18:18
  Because it was a bunch of Reddit threads that I saw.
• 18:21
  And God, I love Reddit sometimes.
• 18:22
  I know we hate Reddit, but I also love Reddit.
• 18:24
  No, I'm like addicted to it. I've never commented on Reddit
• 18:28
  but I am addicted. To oh, my comment history is
• 18:30
  probably horrendous, but it was a lot of people being like, I
• 18:34
  know that South Australian coastline is bad, but what can I
• 18:37
  do? And literally the easiest thing
• 18:40
  for every single person to do was to go out and buy fish from
• 18:43
  SA around Christmas time. Yeah, OK, that was it.
• 18:46
  That was the take away. That was like, hey guys, go do
• 18:48
  this. Do this, yeah.
• 18:50
  And it's I love that. And The thing is.
• 18:51
  It gives people actionable. Actionable things.
• 18:54
  We consume more media and news now than ever, but we feel more
• 18:58
  helpless about it. So as you're consuming it, here
• 19:00
  is a small little actionable thing that you can do for the
• 19:03
  issue and for yourself. So are you guys going to become
• 19:07
  a charity? Are you going to be a business?
• 19:09
  It's currently just as a business we want to have a
• 19:12
  charity on because we want to be able to make sure that the
• 19:14
  things that you can do also help other people and work through it
• 19:17
  that way. The goal is that it does do all
• 19:19
  of that for the industry as well, but at the moment all of
• 19:22
  our stories have that as the through line and whatever you
• 19:25
  read that there's something that you can do.
• 19:27
  So even if we're helping our small audience, yeah, that's all
• 19:30
  we care about at the end of the day.
• 19:32
  You should raise money. I'm trying.
• 19:34
  Oh, you are. I was gonna say like this
• 19:36
  elevator pitch, like I would invest if I had money to invest.
• 19:40
  I got my first grant application rejection this morning, so I was
• 19:43
  like. It's OK, it happens.
• 19:46
  Lots more rejection to come, but you only need one yes.
• 19:49
  You only need one. Yes, that's the thing about
• 19:51
  sales and grants and all of that.
• 19:52
  I mean, sometimes you need more, but you know, in general you
• 19:55
  just need your first. One, you need your first one and
• 19:57
  then you're like, oh, this has legs.
• 19:59
  Yes. And then you're like, OK, people
• 20:00
  believe in me. Oh my God, no.
• 20:01
  I love that. Thank you.
• 20:03
  So I wanted to pivot back to you speaking about being a woman of
• 20:06
  color, being so public. Can you speak to me about your
• 20:10
  experience? First of all, having to be
• 20:12
  chronically online. I know you enjoy being
• 20:13
  chronically online, but having to be chronically online as well
• 20:16
  for your job and putting your face out there, what is that
• 20:20
  experience like? The biggest thing as a woman of
• 20:25
  color on the Internet is that you will always have to work 10
• 20:28
  times harder. Or in any industry actually, you
• 20:32
  always have to work 10 times harder.
• 20:34
  But it's, it's very clear when you see say like all white
• 20:39
  female line UPS on a panel or at festivals or events, or
• 20:43
  especially with like International Women's Day coming
• 20:45
  up so soon. And you love all of these people
• 20:48
  that you work with, but you know that they were approached versus
• 20:51
  you having to put yourself forward.
• 20:53
  And I think that is ultimately at the end of the day, the key
• 20:56
  big difference is I have to bang on the door and be like, Hey,
• 21:01
  please let me in. And my friends who I love
• 21:04
  dearly, it is 100 times easier for them because they don't have
• 21:07
  to be pounding on the door as hard.
• 21:08
  I wanted to share an anecdote. You don't have to comment on it
• 21:11
  if you don't feel comfortable, but I thought it would be useful
• 21:13
  for our listeners to hear this. One of my closest friends runs
• 21:17
  an independent media brand as well, and she's a woman of color
• 21:21
  and her team have historically all been women of color.
• 21:24
  And, you know, she went through an experience where after about
• 21:27
  a year of them having their faces on their TikTok account,
• 21:31
  there was so much racism and discrimination that she actually
• 21:34
  had to make the executive decision editorially that they
• 21:37
  do not put their faces on TikTok anymore for the safety of
• 21:40
  herself, but also her team. I remember her talking about
• 21:42
  this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:43
  I have thought about that many a time, especially during the rise
• 21:47
  of there was that whole like MLM multi level marketing stuff
• 21:51
  around like faceless accounts. And I was like, what if I just
• 21:53
  turn myself? Oh my gosh.
• 21:58
  I feel like there's actually a lot of faceless accounts that do
• 22:00
  really well, but I mean the problem is you shouldn't have to
• 22:03
  be fucking faceless. Shouldn't have to be faceless.
• 22:05
  And that was the thing. I shouldn't have to be faceless.
• 22:07
  Ultimately, at the end of the day, the aesthetic of being
• 22:10
  white will always trump whatever we have.
• 22:13
  And yes, with what happened with with our friend there, I think
• 22:19
  about that a lot quite often, especially when I get racist
• 22:22
  comments just, you know, especially policy advocacy type
• 22:26
  of work. It's a lot of go back to your
• 22:28
  own country. I think a lot of it is knowing
• 22:31
  that I have people in the industry that I can just be
• 22:34
  like, hey, did you see my comment section?
• 22:37
  Yeah, I just need to talk. And I think we've had similarly
• 22:40
  on the other hand, so it's. Like the validation?
• 22:44
  The validation. Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:46
  Because knowing that you're not the only one who's going through
• 22:48
  this and that ultimately, as human beings is what we want the
• 22:52
  most. Yeah.
• 22:53
  Is that acknowledgement and understanding of being like, I
• 22:55
  see you. I hear, like, I see what you're
• 22:57
  going through. I hear what you're going through
• 22:58
  like I'm here for. You.
• 23:00
  Yeah. So I wanted to pivot, yeah, to
• 23:02
  something else you recently said publicly.
• 23:04
  Me just like diving in to. Never going to post 3.
• 23:10
  You spoke about how the creator economy has had to grow up a
• 23:13
  bit. Yeah, tell me about that.
• 23:14
  China's done a really, really cool thing with one of their
• 23:16
  policies where if you want to talk about financial advice or
• 23:20
  if you want to talk about medical advice on the Internet
• 23:22
  as an influencer, you need the degree to back it up.
• 23:26
  We did not know that. I love that so.
• 23:28
  Important, yes, because there is a lot of misinformation out
• 23:31
  there. As we know.
• 23:32
  When you look at content online, you've got like three types of
• 23:34
  subject areas. You've got like you're lived
• 23:37
  experience expert. It's like this happened to me.
• 23:40
  You've got opinions, which is what 90% of the content on the
• 23:43
  Internet is. And then you've also got people
• 23:46
  who are actually experts in the fields with say degrees and
• 23:50
  research and actual practice. The problem is those 3 feeds are
• 23:56
  now all in one A. 100%. And so when you're scrolling
• 24:00
  through and you're getting those first 3 seconds, you are not
• 24:02
  really able to different. The human mind can't
• 24:04
  differentiate that that fast and therefore the idea of
• 24:08
  credibility and being able to be like, oh, I can trust this
• 24:12
  person is very wishy washy. It's really important I think
• 24:16
  now for creators as well as brands to be able to create new
• 24:20
  signifiers. And that's what China has done
• 24:23
  as well. Like in terms of putting that
• 24:25
  into practice for the platforms and stuff that they have over
• 24:27
  there, which are completely separate to the platforms that
• 24:29
  we have in, say, Australia and America and such, to then say,
• 24:34
  OK, if this person is giving you medical advice, here's the
• 24:37
  credentials. Yeah.
• 24:38
  Otherwise they can't, they get kicked off the app, they can't
• 24:41
  create that content. And I think that that is
• 24:42
  incredibly important because I will never say that I am a
• 24:47
  psychologist. Yeah, but I will say I'm a
• 24:48
  mental health advocate and work in that space.
• 24:51
  And that is my level of expertise.
• 24:53
  Yeah. And that's the clear
• 24:54
  differentiation which we don't really have here.
• 24:57
  No, I think users try and create it themselves, right?
• 25:02
  Like when you watch a TikTok and somebody holds up their degree
• 25:04
  or they say I'm an XYZ and therefore, you know, to like
• 25:08
  quote UN quote trust them. But I completely agree.
• 25:10
  We have that problem across the board where all of those three
• 25:13
  like types of creators, pieces of content are all in one feed.
• 25:17
  And another problem that I see very often is that we're all
• 25:20
  together in the same room. Age wise.
• 25:23
  Age wise. So you could be fighting with
• 25:25
  somebody who is legitimately 11 and you, I have no idea, they
• 25:28
  are leaving unhinged comments and you're fighting back because
• 25:30
  you're like, no, you don't understand.
• 25:31
  This is my credibility. This is who I am.
• 25:33
  This is what I meant in that video, whatever.
• 25:35
  And it's like you have no idea that you're actually fighting
• 25:37
  with somebody who's 11. Who's 11?
• 25:38
  And This is why, you know, when we talk about a topical issue in
• 25:42
  this country around like the social media ban and stuff,
• 25:44
  there is no Internet spaces for kids now, no.
• 25:47
  Or teens like we used to have youth catered Internet spaces
• 25:51
  growing up that does not exist. So it is a free for all in the
• 25:54
  comments section from everyone from 15 to 55 A. 100%. 85 I know
• 26:00
  my granddad's in the comments section, so like, come on.
• 26:03
  Older than 55. Definitely, for sure.
• 26:05
  I was trying to be nice and that I brought my grandfather into
• 26:08
  it. OK, so then what guardrails do
• 26:10
  you think should be but put in place?
• 26:12
  But should it be through the platforms?
• 26:14
  Should it be governments? I mean, I know we have.
• 26:17
  I know that's controversial because we just had the under 16
• 26:20
  social media ban here. Yes, when it comes to this,
• 26:23
  prohibition's never the answer. I will 100% die on that hill.
• 26:26
  We've seen historically, time and time again prohibition not
• 26:30
  working for a multitude of things.
• 26:31
  If you're going to treat the Internet, which the floodgates
• 26:34
  opened for that decades ago, you can't close them now, no.
• 26:38
  Especially for kids that grew up chronically online.
• 26:40
  Exactly. And I understand when people
• 26:43
  come back with the argument, Oh, well, the band's not for someone
• 26:45
  who's 15. The band is for someone who's
• 26:47
  5:00. I've got an 8 year old cousin.
• 26:50
  The band's still messed with her head.
• 26:52
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She now can't have YouTube Kids
• 26:54
  anymore. And she went to India and she
• 26:56
  had access to YouTube and she just landed back from India this
• 27:00
  week and she now no longer has access to YouTube.
• 27:02
  Yeah. And it's less about the
• 27:03
  platforms and more about the fact that there is just no
• 27:06
  online space for children that is safe and made with them in
• 27:10
  mind. And that is what a lot of the
• 27:12
  advocacy groups and the research think tanks who were vehemently
• 27:17
  opposed to the bill as it went through was, hey, we agree that
• 27:20
  they shouldn't be on Instagram at the age of 8, but they need
• 27:23
  to have a space for them at the age of like 810, etcetera,
• 27:26
  etcetera. And that's ultimately how I see
• 27:29
  that sitting. Yeah, and it's really tough too,
• 27:32
  because back to us all being in the same room together now,
• 27:37
  children, preteens are going to Sephora, right?
• 27:40
  And they're using Drunk Elephants, and they're using all
• 27:42
  these products that like we would have never used at that
• 27:44
  age. And it's because they're looking
• 27:46
  up to influencers now, like we looked up to celebrities.
• 27:49
  And I'm not saying it's better or worse, I don't know.
• 27:50
  But I think looking up to influencers who are like, let's
• 27:53
  say, a decade older than you and you get such an intimate look
• 27:56
  into their lifestyle and their life, of course you're going to
• 27:58
  want to emulate that. Like I was trying to emulate
• 28:00
  Jessica Simpson too, but I just didn't really know anything
• 28:02
  about her. So, you know, I didn't.
• 28:03
  Have access to what she was doing every single morning.
• 28:06
  Get ready with me is where she was going out.
• 28:08
  There is so much access to people now. 100% that that is
• 28:12
  actually the the issue at hand. It's how much of yourself you're
• 28:16
  sharing online. And how much these young kids
• 28:18
  are absorbing from older people that they look up to.
• 28:21
  And therefore, of course they're going to want to not be on apps
• 28:24
  that are, let's say, made for them.
• 28:25
  Like if there was an app that was made, I'm sure there's apps
• 28:27
  made for kids. But you know, if there was apps
• 28:29
  made for 15 year olds, I totally get why they don't want to be on
• 28:31
  them because they're like, well no, I want to be on the app.
• 28:33
  With like what do you? Want to do at 15?
• 28:36
  I wanted to be 25, yeah. I wanted to act like a 25.
• 28:39
  I even dressed like a 25 year old did other things that I
• 28:42
  thought a 25 year old was doing that I shouldn't have been doing
• 28:45
  a. 100% like it makes total sense and I I see how damaging
• 28:49
  it is like I totally agree but it's such a hard issue to
• 28:53
  tackle. Which is why, controversially,
• 28:55
  this is a hot take here. As much as I hated how the roll
• 28:59
  out of Shay Mitchell's skin care brand for kids, I understand the
• 29:04
  logic behind it absolutely. Because if they're they're
• 29:06
  wanting to emulate like they're seeing the their mom and they're
• 29:10
  seeing all of these things on the Internet and stuff and
• 29:13
  they're seeing the Drunk Elephant consumption, why not
• 29:16
  have a skin care brand of a face mask that's like a panda?
• 29:20
  It is creating that space for them with what I think it's just
• 29:23
  water and a few other things. Yeah, I don't think that's
• 29:25
  actually that controversial. I spoke about that and there
• 29:28
  were a lot of people, at least in our comments section, that
• 29:31
  understood where she was coming from.
• 29:33
  I think the way it was marketed was weird.
• 29:35
  The marketing of it was weird. But I think in general, parents
• 29:38
  put moisturizer on their kids, Yeah, and they want to do what
• 29:42
  they see their parents doing. And if mommy's using mascara or
• 29:45
  Daddy's using face wash or whatever, they want to do the
• 29:47
  same thing. Exactly a. 100% OK well my last
• 29:50
  question for you before we wrap up this beautiful chat in the
• 29:54
  beautiful scenery is how do you touch grass right now?
• 29:59
  I am at the beach every single day.
• 30:00
  No way. Every day, like almost every
• 30:03
  single day. It's a walking distance from my
• 30:04
  house. I'm at the water every single
• 30:05
  day. Something about like actually
• 30:07
  going for a run. Not for me.
• 30:10
  I trained for a 10K last year and I'm never doing that again.
• 30:13
  Did you do the 10? K no, I injured myself.
• 30:15
  Oh my gosh. Wait, I think I knew this.
• 30:17
  And you were gonna go with a brand, right?
• 30:19
  And I injured myself. No, because I just, I suck at
• 30:23
  running and I'm at the stage of my life where I'm like, I know
• 30:26
  who I am and who I am is not a runner.
• 30:28
  OK, you know, fair enough. So I go for walks along the
• 30:31
  beach and I go for little jogs along the beach and get out of
• 30:35
  your head. Yeah, I get out of my head.
• 30:37
  And I used to be a professional figure skater and I've started
• 30:41
  going back to the rink because heated rivalry made me really
• 30:45
  miss my figure skating. A.
• 30:47
  Professional figure skater, what are you talking about?
• 30:49
  Give me the T. From 5 to 18 I skated for
• 30:52
  Australia in like America. Wait.
• 30:54
  What? I thought the lore is so deep
• 30:57
  with you, what are you talking about?
• 30:59
  So if you're in Sydney, you might have been to Macquarie
• 31:03
  Shopping Centre and they've got like the ice rink and the
• 31:05
  McDonald's looks down onto the ice rink there.
• 31:07
  I was five years old and I had to go with my dad to the
• 31:10
  university. It was the school holidays and
• 31:13
  my dad told me that if I behaved, I would get McDonald's,
• 31:15
  which has a 5 year old. That's all you want?
• 31:17
  Yes, I went there, saw all of these people twirling around on
• 31:21
  this white surface, and I told my dad I wanted to try that.
• 31:24
  And then I think I went to like, 3 or 5, somewhere between 3:00
• 31:29
  to 5:00. National championships in
• 31:30
  Australia, went to worlds and we placed 17th.
• 31:35
  There's no money in figure skating in Australia.
• 31:36
  If anyone, after heated rivalry and hearing this rivalry and
• 31:41
  after hearing this, wants to get into like, a winter sport, make
• 31:45
  sure you win the lottery. And yes, skated in the states
• 31:48
  for the team in Minnesota, which.
• 31:51
  What? Yeah.
• 31:53
  Pearl, do you have footage of this?
• 31:54
  Wait, you need to start a new TikTok account?
• 31:56
  Speaking of being chronically online, my media thought is how
• 32:00
  can you put this on TikTok and let everybody know you need to
• 32:02
  make a new TikTok account? I posted about this a lot over
• 32:05
  the last few weeks actually because of the heated rivalry
• 32:08
  stuff. No, you need to make a dedicated
• 32:10
  TikTok account about this with clips of you figure skating like
• 32:15
  from the archive. I love this.
• 32:18
  This is crazy. But I'm really excited for the
• 32:20
  Winter Olympics and I've got like a whole plan for that
• 32:22
  because no one covers the Winter Olympics here.
• 32:24
  Well I will be keeping tabs because I freaking love winter
• 32:27
  sports, obviously being from Canada.
• 32:29
  Being from Canada, exactly OK. So you go to the beach every day
• 32:32
  and you're going back into. Skating.
• 32:33
  I'm getting back into skating. So I go once a week, slip it
• 32:36
  out. I took my skates out of the
• 32:38
  cupboard again. I go through this phase like
• 32:40
  probably like every 18 months where I go back for three months
• 32:43
  and then I'm like, I'm too tired, I've got too much work.
• 32:45
  Yes, I understand that I was a competitive swimmer growing up.
• 32:49
  I was a professional, but I was I was competitive and you're.
• 32:53
  Competitive with everything. I see that for you in a good
• 32:55
  way. In a good way.
• 32:56
  I promise you don't. See that for me at all, Thank
• 32:58
  you. I'm.
• 32:59
  Competitive with myself, which is why.
• 33:01
  That's what I mean. So low sports, it works really
• 33:03
  well for me. Like I yeah, 100% yes.
• 33:07
  I agree with that. No, but every once in a while
• 33:09
  I'll be like, you know, my mom's like that is like how you
• 33:12
  decompress is like, you are like a swimmer, like go to the pool,
• 33:15
  like swim laps, whatever. And every once in a while I do
• 33:18
  it and I'm like, I'm going to do this every day.
• 33:19
  This is like changed my life. And then you just get busy.
• 33:22
  And you get busy, You just forget.
• 33:23
  Yeah, you get busy and you forget.
• 33:25
  But you actually should be going back to the activities and the
• 33:28
  hobbies that you had as a kid. Apparently everybody.
• 33:29
  'S talking about that. Everyone's talking about it.
• 33:33
  It's honestly been. Amazing.
• 33:34
  Thank you for having me. I love hanging out with you
• 33:36
  guys. This podcast is produced by the
• 33:38
  youth digital media brand Centennial World.
• 33:42
  Centennial World Podcast Network operates on Gadigal land.
• 33:45
  We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the
• 33:48
  traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to
• 33:51
  elders both past and present.